Texas city ponders boycotting Alabama over controversial abortion law

Friday

An Austin, Texas, City Council member is calling for a boycott of Alabama that would prohibit the city from doing business with the state and not allow staffers to travel there on business.

The proposed measure, from Council Member Leslie Pool, comes after Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey signed the most restrictive abortion legislation in the country this week, making performing an abortion a felony in nearly all cases. Pool posted on the council’s message board Friday, asking colleagues to join her in sponsoring a boycott resolution to add to the council’s June 6 meeting.

“Alabama’s new statute is an assault on women’s constitutional right to make our own decisions about our own reproductive health and Austin should help fight back,” Pool wrote. “Of course, the Alabama bill comes at a time when states across the nation, including Texas, are taking aggressive action against women as part of an organized effort to overturn Roe v. Wade at the Supreme Court.”

The city of Austin similarly boycotted Arizona for about eight years after that state passed a controversial anti-immigration law in 2010. City Manager Spencer Cronk ended that boycott last year, saying court orders had largely eroded the Arizona law.

Missouri was expected to pass a bill Friday that would ban nearly all abortions after eight weeks of pregnancy. Pool did not immediately respond to a message asking whether, if the bill passes, she will add Missouri to her proposed boycott.

It is unclear whether Austin does any current business with Alabama. Neither the city’s vendor database, nor its check register, is searchable by address. City spokesman David Green said if such a resolution passes, staff members will have to research its impacts, depending on the resolution’s language.

Officials in Maryland and Colorado have also called for economic retaliation against Alabama for the abortion law, according to a Reuters report Thursday. Maryland’s comptroller, Peter Franchot, said he would advise that his state’s pension fund divest from Alabama and urged other states to do the same.